This Is Summer

Although I’m not always successful, I try really hard to schedule one weekend per month as a “Family Weekend” – nothing on the calendar at all; a whole entire weekend with just the five of us at home doing ‘nothing’ (i.e. everything that is really important). These weekends are in some ways very challenging; they are hard to fit in, hard to stick to once we’ve got them on the calendar, and hard to abide to once we’re in the moment (the five of us have a hard time sitting still… each of us in our own way). But once we’re doing these weekends of “nothing,” we always deeply appreciate them. The rest of our July is jam-packed (you should see our calendar!), but this past weekend was our Family Weekend for this month. It was a quintessential Summer Weekend.

We don’t have t.v. service (no cable, no nothin’!), but Braydon has hooked up a computer to our television. Just this month, for the first time ever, we have subscribed to MLB.TV and the boys (Kyle, especially) are beside themselves with excitement over this… the chance to watch Red Sox games live in our own home!!! Kyle and Braydon watched the entire game on Saturday afternoon (Kyle’s attention span for baseball is amazing; he watches the entire game absorbing every single second of it). Meanwhile… outside at the pool (while Meera napped), Owen was perfecting his flip-from-the-chair-into-the-pool-routine. I watched him and watched him and watched him and finally broke out the camera.

The weekend was just full of times like this. The best of summer. And nothing says “Summer” better than meals on the porch.

(FYI: above was our dinner Saturday – but I want it to be noted that for lunch on Sunday Owen ate 1 cheeseburger and 2 hot dogs. All in about 10 minutes flat. He was hungry again within two hours and I watched him eat three –yes three—nectarines in a row. This is just one example; they eat like this non-stop. By Monday morning our refrigerator was basically empty. Staying home all weekend long = a shocking amount of food production for Mama.)

There were a few tantrums (M); there were a bunch of “GO TO YOUR ROOM!”’s (K & O); there were some low moments (H & B). But those were just peppered amongst the good stuff. And a little spice never hurt anyone. It is the pepper that punctuates. Without the ‘ugh!’ the really good wouldn’t be so really good. And there is just a lot about summer that is really, really good.

 

After the Red Sox game on Saturday the boys (all three of them) were inspired. There is something about seeing my boys (all three of them) play baseball in the front yard that just screams SUMMER to me in an over-the-top ridiculously quintessentially summerish-beyond-summerish way. There was a split-second when a ball flew within an inch of my camera lens—almost hitting my camera (and thus, probably my face too) in a way that just might have been seriously damaging (and not just to the camera). It was a close call. A near miss. But the rest of the time it was just sort of blissful – to be standing there, in our front yard, with just my little family, taking pictures of my boys play ball in their bathing suits. Life isn’t perfect, and there are near-misses and low moments all the time. But really—it doesn’t get much better than this. This is summer. To the Nth degree.